A Scribe Dies In Brooklyn: A Rabbi Ben Mystery

Rabbi Ben, hero of For Whom The Shofar Blows, is back, and more than ever he’s not your bubbe’s rebbe: Lured to a clandestine meeting with the President of Israel, Ben is asked to find the long-missing third of the Aleppo Codex, the world’s oldest complete Hebrew Bible, rivaled in historical importance only by the Dead Sea Scrolls. The missing pages reportedly surfaced in Brooklyn’s Syrian Jewish community, only to vanish again. It’s a job that only Ben can handle. Plunging into a strange, quasi-medieval culture that is both Middle Eastern and Iberian, Ben learns that others seek the Codex—and that they don’t play nice. His guide to all things Aleppo-on Gravesend Bay is Miryam, the sassy, sexy, sweet, grand-niece of the late and increasingly mysterious man rumored to have smuggled the Codex out of Syria almost 70 years earlier. Sparks fly as mystery veers toward a surprise romance and an ending that you won’t see coming.

Before his 21st birthday, Marvin J. Wolf walked five miles through a blizzard to pay a family debt, flunked an LAPD Internal Affairs polygraph, served as a U.S. Army drill instructor, taught hand-to-hand combat to Army officers, ran a weapons squad in cold-war South Korea, worked in a junk yard, sold encyclopedias door-to-door, and served with distinction as a delicatessen pearl diver. While serving as a First Cavalry Division combat correspondent in Vietnam, Wolf walked away from three helicopter crashes, earned a Bronze Star, Purple Heart and three Air Medals, and then a battlefield promotion to lieutenant. He later commanded a Signal Corps company. Back in civilian clothes, he became a globetrotting photojournalist; when he regained sole custody of his adolescent daughter and was forced to choose between frequent travel and single parenthood, he turned to writing. He is the author of hundreds of magazine articles, more than a dozen nonfiction works, a series of mystery novels, and several screenplays. Two of his teleplays, based on stories from his own nonfiction books, were produced as made-for-television movies. Wolf lives in Asheville, NC, with his adult daughter and a pair of ferociously lovable Chihuahuas.